January 21, 2006

I have more connections I made while attending the Affiliate Summit - really what makes attending a conference worthwhile (I think for a _seminar_ the content is just as important or more so).

I talked with Debra Rabin from American Life Direct. I do promote a small amount of life insurance and Debra followed up with me after the conference - she was fast and the very first e-mail contact I received after getting home (you go girl!). American Life Direct has an attractive landing page with only 3 questions and an e-mail required to count as a lead. Their offer is appealing to the consumer as an easy-to-qualify for life insurance plan that they can literally fill out, qualify for and print out the paperwork in 10 minutes!

I have to admit I gravitated to other women at the conference. I found I got the best response and communication from other women, although we must've comprised maybe 15-20% of the attendees. Many of the women were there for Affiliate Merchants (programs), so I bet the number of women affiliates (webmasters) were a much lower percentage. Think we should all band together as "Women on the Net" and create our own "old girl" network.

I missed Tuesday as I had to check out early due to floor maintainence, but that was fine. I knew I had met quite a few people and that some of the new connections would lead to some long term projects, so I was ready to head back. On the way home though, I sat next to a gal that was reading Revenue Magazine. I asked her if she had attended the conference and she had. It was Amanda Rosauer, Marketing Manager from Real Networks' Real Arcade Games division. Very cute and very nice gal.

She was promoting Real Arcade Game Pass for affiliates and said their target market is, surprise, women ages 30-45! I definitely fall into (and know) that demographic - and I am a total sucker for games like Bejeweled. We talked for quite awhile, and I mentioned, you know, we have a Rosauer's grocery store in my town....And she said,"Oh, that's my husband's family." Small world in the Northwest. His family started the chain, but sold it to the employees.

From everyone I met, I can say I have 2 new articles being published - Look for a case study I wrote for Affliate Classroom published by the end of January - 1 new promo, and some promising affiliate deals I can take advantage of with a real person to talk to and get the best results!

January 16, 2006

I appeared at the Affiliate Summit Sunday and Monday of the total 4 day event. First of all I'd like to thank Joel Comm who made it possible for me to attend - Really, thanks Joel! I got to meet him in person for the first time, and he's a genuinely nice guy. I went to Joel's special AdSense Workshop Sunday and I estimate there were around 75 in attendence. The session went well and although I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable AdSense publisher, I heard some interesting things and the interaction of audience questions and Joel's insight made for a more useful session than others I attended :^)

Sunday night I went to the Speed Networking event - my list of 8 people to meet in hand. I got to meet with 6 out of 8 - not bad since a number of people had 50% no shows. Most of the people I met with I had requested to meet with them, either because I use their product, or hoped to hear more about what they offered that I may want to tap into as either an affiliate or to our Cash Keywords users.

Here's who I met:

Magdalena Giacone - Loved her! They lost her meeting list so she was meeting anyone she could. She had a neat giveaway of a paper cone with her card, 2 free pints of ice cream coupons (Who doesn't like that?), all wrapped in cellophane. Magda is Affiliate Marketing Associate for IMarketing LTD.

Susan Milligan - Co-founder of Basic Templates.com. She also wrote about her experiences at Aff Summit. I have bought their templates in the past and they are really clean, with external CSS files and designed with interchangeable graphics. I love that it's easy for a design challenged person like me and the prices can't be beat. Susan was very nice and genuinely glad to meet a customer in kind of an unexpected place.

Samantha Hensch - Wow! What a bubbly lady! She certainly got alot of info about Digital River in a short 5-8 minutes of meeting. Samantha is strategic marketing manager, and while I am already a Digital River Affiliate - not doing anything with it - and she made me rethink that I need to look at them more seriously.

Ankush Nayar and Anik Singal - AffiliateClassroom.com - I was really wanting to meet these guys and that's why I scheduled both of them. Anik and I had a shorter amount of time to talk, but Ankush and I had longer. I actually got a call back today from Ankush, so look for an article from me or some other CK related content/ads in Affiliate Classroom Magazine this spring! They have been publishing a beautiful online magazine - FREE - since 2004 and it coming from the perspective of the affiliate webmaster, so make sure to take a look.

Noreen Thurston - Godaddy.com's Affiliate Manager. I am a longtime Godaddy customer and I wanted to hear if they had anything new that I should know about. Noreen and Mary Diers, the Advertising Manager, were alot of fun and obviously serious about communicating with their affiliates. They are the kind of affiliate managers I like to work with. We ate at the luncheon the next day, laughed alot, and all I can say is "Girls Rule!" If the "Godaddy Girls" aren't at my next conference, I will be very disappointed.

Clark Stephens - Overstock.com's Affiliate program manager. I wanted to meet Clark out of curiosity because I enjoy sneaking a peek at Woot.com and I knew there is a connection with Woot and Overstock (he explained all that). Also as I look at products and profitable keywords from a top paying keyword standpoint, Overstock has a tremendous variety of goods and at very competitive pricing. If you mix AdSense and Affiliate links on the same page, Overstock probably has a retail product to match your topic. Not sure if Clark could see where I was going with a connection between what I do at Cash Keywords and Overstock, but I see one and will get some ideas out to him.

Day one and speed networking ended at 10:20 pm, and left alot of East Coast attendees yawning (it was 12:20 am there), but overall a good start for many of us. I can tell you the contacts I made just at the speed networking event will lead to some long term relationships for sure.

The last 10 days have been an exhausting whirlwind, although an enjoyable one. I appeared on fellow TW member, Greg Niland's Good Karma show on Jan 5th. Just click on the listen now link for the show. A couple unexpected things happened. First, I was expecting to be the only person on the show, but instead was in the (good) company of Wordtracker. Can't say we are as esteemed as Wordtracker, but we certainly aspire to be as reputable and around for the long haul as they have been in our community.

Secondly, we did have some feedback/technical issues and the format was changed, so I appeared in the second half of the show. Originally I was going to answer questions about keywords together with Ken from Worktracker, and ended up just talking about Cash Keywords. That was fine and I hope informative for the listeners.

We went over some ideas on how to use top paying keyword lists, and I let listeners know we have some new products coming out AND it's still online, a page with a free 1,000 result Internet Marketing Cash Keyword Report. You can get one, too, but I won't be keeping the offer up permanently. I expect to do more podcasts in the future, and I just need to get comfortable with a new and interesting online format that goes well with other online content.

January 12, 2006

Chitika News just posted an e-mail response from Chitika about the rumored Text Ads that look remarkably like Google ads. Turns out it's just a rumor, and a leftover from another product that Chitika offered previously - and says they will no longer support.

Guess we are all just used to hearing rumors about Google and Yahoo that, for the most part, turn out to be true later.

January 05, 2006

I (Roxanne) will be at Affiliate Summit 2006 as a participant from Sunday thru Tuesday morning - the 8th thru the 10th. Look for me at Joel Comm's sessions or at the Speed Networking Event for sure. I will have a red LED badge with Cashkeywords.com running on it (gaudy I know! but not out of place in Vegas, right?). If you can corner me, I just might tell you a few hints/inside info on what Cash Keywords has in store for 2006. Plus I will be giving out some fun things, too, as I meet people.

Full report when I get back - should be some new things we'll hear about while there, and some AdSense publishers to meet, too.

December 30, 2005

CashKeywords was invited to participate in a podcast with Greg Niland aka GoodROI from the GoodKarma show on Webmasterradio next Thursday. The podcast is scheduled for 4 pm EST, and the first half hour will cover general keyword topics, and the second half will be about CashKeywords Specifically.

I will be the official spokesperson for CashKeywords as usual, and we will be giving away a report for listeners of that show only. After the Broadcast, I will post the audio link and cover some of the topics we discussed, too.

December 29, 2005

Thinking about the possibility of disaster or something bad happening to you that you are incapacitated or worse isn't pleasant - ever. But it's something I have seriously considered myself and planned for (I even made a will this year). For the first time ever that I can recall, this topic of what to leave in your place if something should happen to you was addressed on WMW. Called "Hit by a Bus" it's not only an apt title, but a thread that gets you thinking, as well as some handy suggestions.

If you have children, it's easy to consider taking the time to write everything down, and make proper arrangements for your business and websites to continue to bring in some cash. If you don't have kids, maybe you have a girlfriend/boyfriend or siblings that can use some help or parents you want to give to. Don't forget, you may not die or pass away, but what if you get really sick for a period of time, or incapacitated and need assistance to continue your online business? If your business is incorporated, you may already have someone designated as an employee/officer of the corporation that can continue to deposit incoming checks and run the business legally.

The New Year is good time to gather up your AdSense Empire codes and the basic info on hosting, passwords, and even suggesting someone to contact for help, or to sell the site(s) to. Just type up this info as clearly as you can so even an internet novice will know what to do, then store it in a safe, safety deposit box, or other predetermined location. I actually keep a "little black book" to write down info I need for my work. Updating this information once a year is a good idea as things change.

Also consider taking the next step towards estate planning and write a letter to your family (survivors) and let then know how to access your documents and what you want them to do, i.e. "First try to maintain sites with Joe Smith's help. As a last resort, contact XYZ.com or Mr. Abc to sell the websites to."

None of this takes the place of a proper Estate Plan or will, and you should contact an attorney in your area to find out what exactly you need.

December 21, 2005

New tool hot off the presses from Digital Inspiration (saw it via ChitikaNews who pointed it out to me). We knew someone would figure out how to see ad previews for your URL using the current "Big 3" Publisher Networks (MSN - you better jump in there soon, or buy out Chitika and make their New Year). Just enter the URL of the page you want to preview ads on and you can choose from AdSense Color formats, and then select the link to the ad combo you want.

You have your Preview Tool choice of either an IE compatible download, a FireFox extension or an "all-in-one" online tool Great job!

I tried cashkeywords.com and compared Adsense Yahoo. I got OK matching from Adsense, and poor matching from Yahoo, 1 out of 4 relevant ads and the rest ROS garbage - you know Vonage and Mortgage ads. No Wonder YPN CTR is bad, but the one page I did test, despite a poor CTR still got some clicks well over $1 each and so it did as well as Adsense overall - however, I'm not sure what ads got clicked because what I saw on that test of YPN was junk. nice to be able to compare potential ads for the same exact page.....

November 28, 2005

Hide your website text content, e-mail address or original articles that you don't want ripped off with HideText. This site has an online tool that allows you to insert text into a field, set the characters, and voila! an image of your text you can now add to your blog or website.

I decided to try it, and here's the result using what I just typed:

You can enter up to 100K characters in one image (arial or verdana font only right now), and download the result and delete the image, or link to the image on their server.

This could really foil all those AdSense hungry content burglars from getting your stuff thru copy and paste. They _could_ steal the image, but most image stealers are too dumb to change the image file name if you had to search it out - and these have weird names unless you change them. If text images aren't your cup of tea, you could always use the excellent copyright cop - CopyScape.

The bonus idea is that Google isn't able to index your site content and slap you with a mistaken dupe content penalty, because some guy stole your content and is now benefitting from your hard work. Not being indexed isn't good for rankings, I know, but a clever person could create a mix of text and images to work around the issue.

November 26, 2005

For an easy way to compare Adsense vs Yahoo Publisher, try this Google AdSense vs. YPN PPC Compare Chart. Granted, the commentary contains the writer's own assessment and opinions, but I found some of them hilarious for being so forthcoming and downright blunt.

I 've been testing Yahoo a little lately, and it's been good or terrible results. The ad inventory is so limited and I end up with alot of run of site ads. I read somewhere it can take up to _2 weeks_ for Yahoo ads to target properly, but who wants to wait that long? When it was good I had $ clicks - although a lower CTR than Adsense. The CTR could be so much better with better ad matching. I have high hopes for them though, and maybe when they drop the beta, the ad quantity and targeting will improve.